“Benny,” Nix whispered, “why aren’t they attacking?”
“Don’t encourage them.”
“No . . .”
“Zoms,” said Chong. “After all these years, they’ve probably gotten wary of zoms.”
“Lions don’t attack zoms,” said Nix.
“No. As you both pointed out, nothing does.” He lightly touched his pocket, and they could hear the clink of his bottles of cadaverine. “We all smell like zombies.”
“I’m not wearing any,” said Benny. “Neither is Eve.”
Chong sighed.
The lioness heard their muted conversation and growled.
“She knows. God,” said Nix, adjusting her hold on Eve. Then a moment later she said, “Chong . . . very slowly, see if you can get a bottle of that stuff out of your pocket. Benny, you get my gun.”
“What—?”
“Do it.”
Benny lowered his sword as slowly as he had raised it, all the time watching the lionesses. Moving as smoothly as he could, he shifted his weight toward Nix.
Now two of the lions growled.
He froze. Waited. But the lions still seemed uncertain about their prey. Nix and Chong wore cadaverine, and the wind was blowing toward the lions, which meant that the dead-flesh stink of the zoms was being blown their way too.
Great, thought Benny, zombies might save our lives. Weird.
He placed his palm around the worn rubber grips of the revolver. He could feel the heat from Nix’s body, and there was a slight tremor running through her. She looked calm, but she was clearly as nervous as he was. In a weird way he found that comforting and disturbing at the same time. Benny thought he had begun to understand Nix by the time they left Gameland, but over the intervening weeks he felt she’d changed, and he wasn’t sure he quite got this new Nix. She was stronger, much more confident, more decisive, but also more inward and acid-tongued.
“I have it,” said Chong, and immediately the carrion stench of fresh cadaverine filled the air.
The closest lion suddenly roared in anger. Chong yelped and dropped the bottle, which bounced and vanished into the grass.
“Oh . . . crap,” said Benny and Chong at the same time.
The lioness took a threatening step toward them. Both of the smaller lions lowered themselves into attacking crouches.
“The gun,” growled Nix.
Benny took a breath. All he had to do was pull the gun out of the holster, thumb off the safety, point it at the big female, and fire. It could all be done in one smooth move. They’d all practiced it, and even if he wasn’t as good a shot as Nix, the target was big.
“Nix—get ready to run,” he said. “Ready? Three, two, one!”
He whipped out his hand, gripped the pistol, and yanked as hard as he could.
He was lightning fast, his hand closed perfectly around the pistol butt; he had the strength and the timing exactly right.
But the safety strap was still snapped in place.
The sudden jerk nearly pulled Nix off her feet. She yelped as one hip was yanked upward, and she lost her grip on Eve. Chong dove to catch her, but the action jolted the little girl awake.
Eve saw the lions and screamed.
The lions roared.
The big female suddenly launched herself forward, tearing across the flat ground toward them.
“Nix!” yelled Benny. He let go of the pistol, brought his sword up, and jumped into the path of the charging animal. On either side the smaller lions roared and charged.
I’m going to die.
But then there was a huge crack! and Benny felt something burn past his cheek.
The charging lion shrieked and skidded to a stop, shocked by the sound. Benny couldn’t tell if she had actually been hit by Nix’s bullet. The other lions froze, looking from the prey to the lioness and back again.
Nix shouldered Benny out of the way as she pointed the smoking pistol at the leader of this pack of killers.
The big female roared in fury.
The smaller lions roared.
Even the male bellowed out a roar of bloodlust and anger.
Only Eve’s supersonic shrieks were louder.
The lions began moving forward again, but this time they crept along, angry but wary. Every muscle in their bodies was etched with tension.
In a moment of crystal clarity, Benny realized that even though they might smell like zoms, what they were doing was not zombie behavior. Skilled predators would know this. Would it deter the lions, or would it hasten their own deaths?
Nix wasn’t waiting to find out. She fired again, and this time the lioness jerked suddenly to the left, her hunting cry punched into a different shape—high and plaintive. And angry.
Very, very angry.
Once again the lions froze in place.
The two smaller cats were only twenty feet away. A few more leaps and they would have been among Benny and his friends with claws and fangs. However, their attack had been stalled by the sharp noises and the suddenness of their leader’s hesitation. They turned to look at her. Benny could see blood on the big cat’s shoulder, but if the animal was seriously injured, it didn’t show. Still, she did not immediately renew her attack; instead she began pacing in front of them. Her tail whipped back and forth in irritation, and with each turn she bared her fangs at them.
Nix trembled with mingled fear and effort as she tracked the lion with the gun.
“Benny . . . ,” she breathed.
Eve kept screaming.
“Hush!” barked Nix, and her tone was so commanding that it even silenced the watching lions for a moment; and the big female paused for half a heartbeat in her pacing. Eve lapsed into a sniffling, watching, quivering silence, her fists knotted in Chong’s shirt.
Nix’s lips barely moved as she asked, “What do I do now?”
“Shoot it!” urged Chong.
“I can’t. I only have three bullets left. The rest are in my backpack.”
Benny swallowed. The pistol was a six-shot revolver, but Tom had taught them to keep only five rounds in the cylinder, with the hammer resting on an empty chamber in case of unexpected jolts. The backpack was hanging on the tree.
“Did you hit it both times?” Benny demanded, squinting to study the animal’s fur.
The lion kept pacing, assessing them, eyes narrowed, teeth bared, tail switching with fury.
“No. I missed the first time because someone almost got in the way of my shot.”
“Oh,” said Benny.
“I got her the second time,” continued Nix, “but she doesn’t look hurt.”
“She’s bleeding,” Benny said hopefully.
The lion continued to pace.
“She’s not even limping. Can’t stop four lions with three bullets.”
The smaller ones continued to crouch and glare; and the big male was now on his feet. He might not have been part of the hunt, but he looked more than ready to use his mass and muscle to protect his mate.
“Nix,” said Chong as he shifted to put his body between Eve and the cats, “try and kill the big one. Use a couple of shots.”
“Why?” Benny and Nix both asked.
“It might scare the others off.”
Benny thought about the funeral for Morgie’s dad. Even though they had just buried a person, everyone hung around the Mitchell house for hours to eat and drink. He had an image of the other lions doing the same right now, and he did not particularly want to be grief snacks for hunting cats that shouldn’t even be on this continent in the first place.
“No,” he said. “Don’t.” He didn’t explain his reasoning.
“I have to do something,” said Nix, and now the tremble he had felt in her body was evident in her voice.
The hunting cat stopped pacing and stood directly in front of Nix. Amber eyes burned into Nix’s green ones. There was awful promise in those eyes. Revenge for pain, death to feed her family, satisfaction for frustration.
“Uh-oh,” murmured Nix, and she nervously adjusted her grip on the gun. Sweat ran along her arms.
The lioness lowered herself into a crouch, her muscles springing into sharp definition as she prepared for a charge that a popgun was not going to stop.
Benny suddenly stepped forward, putting himself between her and the lioness. “Listen to me,” he said between gritted teeth. “I’m going to charge them. Maybe I can get one or two of them. As soon as I go, you run. Go into the ravine if you have to. Zoms are easier than—”
“No!” snapped Nix. “Damn it, Benny, you’re not Tom and you can’t do this.”
“I didn’t say I was Tom,” he barked.
The lions growled.
Chong said, “Will you two shut up?”
The big cat screeched her hunting cry and attacked. Her massive body became a tan blur and ran directly at Chong and Eve.
“No!” Benny and Nix both screamed. Nix shoved Benny out of the way and snapped off a wild shot.
Then something whipped between Benny and Nix and flew across the clearing toward the lioness. Benny had a splintered second’s glimpse of it. A cylinder of bright red paper that trailed a plume of thin gray smoke. It struck the ground between him and the lioness, bounced once . . .
. . . and exploded.
BANG!
The flash was as bright as the sun and as loud as a gunshot. But it was a . . .
Benny’s stunned mind scrambled for the word.
. . . a firecracker?
The lion hissed in fear and confusion, looking wildly around to find this new attacker.
Then a second firecracker dropped out of nowhere and exploded before it even hit the ground. The bang tore a howl of anger and fear from the smaller cats, and they scrambled backward, falling, snarling, twisting away.
A third firecracker snapped through the air and burst inches from the lioness’s face.
Her shriek was earsplitting.
Another and another detonated in the air around the lioness.
She tore deep gouges in the ground as she spun around and ran flat out for the tall grass. Despite her wounded shoulder, she passed the smaller cats like they were standing still, and even the powerful male ran in the dust kicked up by her passage.
In seconds the four lions had dwindled to specks in the distance and then were gone, totally out of sight.
Benny stood with his sword forgotten in his hand, mouth open. Nix and Chong were as still as statues. Benny heard a soft footfall to his right, and he turned to see a figure stand up out of the tall grass a dozen feet behind where one of the lions had crouched. A stranger whose presence had not been noticed by anyone, human or feline, who had moved with all the silent stealth of Tom or Lilah.
It was a girl. A teenager. Beautiful, tall, and wild.
But it was not Lilah.
This girl was maybe seventeen, with large brown eyes, a small mouth, and a scalp that had been completely shaved to reveal a complex series of tattoos. Wild roses and thorny vines. She had multiple silver rings pierced through the upper parts of both ears, and a silver necklace from which hung an old-fashioned skeleton key. She wore tattered camouflage shorts, sneakers that were worn to threads, and a vest that was buttoned up over, apparently, nothing else. A Marine Corps belt was strapped around her hips, and it supported a leather-handled hunting knife, a whistle, and a lumpy pouch of what Benny guessed were stones. Crisscrossed over her torso were bandoliers—not of bullets, but of firecrackers.
The girl held a slingshot in her hands, and there was a sharp-edged rock seated in its leather pouch.
The rock was aimed at Nix’s throat.
“I think y’all better lower that gun,” said the stranger. “Right now.”
“Well,” said Chong with a disgusted sigh, “I guess it’s fair to say that this day can’t get any worse.”
The girl smiled a wicked smile and pulled the bands back so hard that they creaked with tension. “Yes, it surely can.”
22
LILAH RAN ALONG EVE’S BACK-TRAIL AS FAST AS SHE COULD.
With every step, though, she felt her heart slip another notch and sink lower in her chest. The sky above her was filled with vultures.
Where were Eve’s parents?
She rounded a bend in the stream and skidded to a stop, whipping the spear up into a combative grip. There, right in front of her, was a clearing in which a camp had been set up. Crude tents and a screen of cut shrubs, a cook fire in a sheltered pit. Clothes and gear.
All of it scattered and torn.
All of it bloody.
Half a dozen vultures huddled around a twisted tangle of rags that had once been a human being.
Lilah held her ground, watching before acting. To rush the scene and chase off the ugly birds would be like sending up a flag to signal her presence. Hunters and killers both watch for disturbances in nature.
She squatted down and tried to look under the carrion birds.
The body on which they were feasting was that of an old man. She could see just enough of its shape and a spill of white hair.
Too old, probably, to be Eve’s father.
The rest of the camp was empty. No other bodies. However, it was clear that there had been a fight here. There were blade marks on the surrounding trees, shrubs were trampled, and there was far too much blood to have come from one feeble old man.
Where were the others? Had they fled the fight? Or had they died and reanimated before the vultures could reduce them to scraps of flesh and bone?
No way to tell. Not without a thorough search, and Lilah did not think she had the time for that. Not with all those reapers in the woods.
Time was burning away. She would have to abandon this search and get back to her friends. If this camp belonged to Eve’s family, then it was already too late. If not . . . ?
“Chong,” she murmured. Chong was a town boy, and those reapers looked fierce. They were engaged in some kind of holy war. Lilah had no intention of getting involved in that, but at the same time, she did not have a clue as to how those reapers would react to Chong, Benny, and Nix. Would they all be left alone as outsiders?